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Bensbach's bird-of-paradise

Janthothorax bensbachi

Bensbach’s bird of paradise is an unknown species of bird known from a single specimen found in West Papua. The bird was killed and collected in the 1890s by J. Bensbach in the Arfak Mountains and was then donated to the Leiden Museum in the Netherlands. Dubbed Janthothorax bensbachi, the bird was unlike any known species, with distinct purple plumage and an iridescent green head. 


Like other mystery birds of paradise, it is dismissed as a hybrid, with Bensbach’s bird of paradise being considered a hybrid of a magnificent riflebird and a lesser bird of paradise. As various cryptozoologists and ornithologists have pointed out, it doesn’t remotely resemble either, and as to how it could even reproduce is questionable, as neither are even in the same genus.

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